Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered the oldest known spiral galaxy, a 10.7-billion-year-old anomaly that by all rights shouldn't exist. The galaxy was present in the early universe, about 3 billion years after the Big Bang, at a time when galaxies were still forming and normally looked clumpy and irregular.

In fact, it is a so-called grand design spiral galaxy, which has prominent, well-formed spiral arms. "The fact that this galaxy exists is astounding," Law said. "Current wisdom holds that such grand design spiral galaxies didn't exist at such an early time in the history of the universe."

Isaiah 44:24 Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;

The night sky is a time machine. Some of what we see ceased to exist millions of years ago, and there are things that currently exist that we won’t see for millions of more years. It’s mind boggling really.

Maybe that galaxy is the Milky Way where it was 10.7 billion years ago. Maybe we are looking at ourselves.

Wouldn't that mean that our galaxy would have to be traveling through space at greater than light speed? Much greater, to outrun our own light by 10.7 billions years. Reminds me of those word problems in middle school..."A galaxy leaves the station traveling at 1,000,000 times the speed of light. How many years would it have to travel to exceed it's original visible location by 10.7 billion light years? Please show your work."

Yep. Atheism is a religion. I love Ravi Zacharias’ explanation of atheism:

“How can you affirm a negative in the absolute?”

It would be like me saying to you, “there is no such thing as a white stone with black dots anywhere in all of the galaxies of this universe.” The only way I can affirm that is if I had unlimited knowledge of this universe!

So to affirm an absolute negative is self-defeating because what you are saying is, “I have infinite knowledge in order to say to you there is nobody with infinite knowledge.” Atheism as a system is self-defeating.

Wouldn't that mean that our galaxy would have to be traveling through space at greater than light speed?

That would depend on whether light bends, how fast the "universe is expanding" and whether that expansion alters the speed of light, and whether the Milky Way entered a "worm hole" somewhere along the way.

Anyway, I've also wondered if there was a reflective surface - a mirror - on a distant (say 1,000 light years away) planet that was perfectly angled to reflect the earth and we could focus on the reflections from that mirror, could we "see" the earth as it was 2,000 years ago?

I wonder about a lot of wacky stuff.

Anyway, we really have no idea how fast we are moving when you factor in the rotation of the earth, the orbit of earth around the sun, the movement of the sun within the Milky Way, and the movement of the Milky Way within the (known) universe. Heck, maybe the universe is moving, too. When you have 15 minutes to kill, check out that Asimov short story I linked in my previous post to you.

It’s awesome to think about isn’t it? Imagine if the inhabitants of a planet 65 million light years away could look at earth. They’d see a planet inhabited by dinosaurs. I read the Asimov piece you linked to. It was fascinating.

I seem to recall that everything on earth is moving in several directions at varying speeds, and that these total to something in the neighborhood of 500,000 miles per hour or second? If something were brought abruptly to an inertial stop (it's vectors of motion were all brought to zero), it would leave our presence at something like 500,000 MPH or MPS ... or, actually, we would leave it at that rate, for ‘it’ would be motionless relative to the rest of the universe in which it was moving prior to be stopped. But that was a good tale, Mr. Asimov ...

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.